Bluetooth Mobile Phones

Bluetooth Mobile Phones
The first place where Bluetooth technology is really taking off is in the cell
phone world. This probably shouldn’t be a surprise because Ericsson (a
huge, cell phone maker) was the initial proponent of the technology, and
other big (huge, actually) cell phone companies such as Nokia are also huge
proponents of the technology.
In early 2003, just about every new phone being announced (except for the
really cheap-o ones) includes Bluetooth technology. Sony Ericsson (that’s
Ericsson’s brand), Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, and Siemens, among others,
have all begun selling Bluetooth-enabled phones. The adoption of the technology
has been really spectacular. In 2002, it was a rarity, and in 2003, it’s
just about standard.
You can do a lot of things with Bluetooth in a cell phone, but the four most
common applications are the following:
Replacing cables: Many people use headsets with their cell phones. It’s
a lot easier to hear with an earpiece in your ear than it is to hold one of
today’s miniscule cell phones up to your ear . . . and a lot more convenient,
too. The wire running up your torso, around your arm, and along
the side of your head into your ear is a real pain, though. (Some people
go to great lengths to keep from being tangled up in this wire — check
out the jackets at www.scottevest.com.) A better solution is to connect
your headset wirelessly — using Bluetooth, of course.
Synchronizing phone books: Lots of us keep a phone book on our PC or
PDA — and most of us who do have been utterly frustrated by the difficulty
that we face when we try to get these phone books onto our cell
phones. If you can do it at all (and you often can’t), you end up buying
some special cable and software and then you still have to manually correct
some of the entries. But with Bluetooth on your cell phone and PC
or PDA, the process can be automatic. (In the meanwhile, we’ve been
using FutureDial, Inc.’s SnapSync [www.futuredial.com; $29] phone
synchronization software to load numbers into our phones. It’s the first
software that we’ve found that does the trick easily and without error.
Buy it until you get a Bluetooth phone!)
Going hands-free in the car: Face it, driving with a cell phone in your
hands isn’t a very safe thing to do. Using a headset is better, but the best
choice (except not using your phone while driving) is to use a completely
hands-free system in your car, which uses a microphone and speakers
(the speakers from your car audio system). This used to take a costly
installation process and meant having someone rip into the wiring and
interior of your car. And if you bought a new phone, you probably
needed to have the old hands-free gear ripped out and a new one
installed. No more — Bluetooth cars are here, and they let you use any
Bluetooth-enabled cell phone to go hands-free. Just set the phone in the
glove box or dashboard cubbyhole and don’t touch it again. Keep your
hands and eyes on the road!
Getting your laptop on the Internet while on the road: We think that
the best way to connect your laptop to the Internet, when you’re out
of the house, is to find an 802.11 hot spot (we talk about these in Chapter
16), but sometimes you’re just not near a hot spot. Well, worry no
more, because if you’ve got a cell phone and laptop with Bluetooth, you
can use your cell phone as a wireless modem to connect to the Internet.
With most cell phone services, you can establish a low-speed, dialup
Internet connection for some basic stuff (like getting e-mail or reading
text-heavy Web pages). If your cell phone system (and plan) includes a
high-speed option (one of the so-called 2.5 or 3G systems), you can get
online at speeds rivaling (although not yet equaling) broadband connections
like digital subscriber line (DSL). All without wires!
The list of Bluetooth-enabled cell phones and accessories is already too long
for us to list here. The Bluetooth Web site (listed earlier) maintains an up-todate
listing of all Bluetooth cell phones and cell phone accessories available.
We expect that list to go from merely large (today) to huge in the very near
future.
We also expect the list of applications for Bluetooth on cell phones to grow.
For example, many new cell phones are camera phones with a built-in digital
camera. The cell phone companies promote this concept because they can
charge customers for multimedia messaging services (MMSes) and allow
people to send pictures to other cell phone customers. But we can also foresee
an application where you could use Bluetooth to send the picture that
you just snapped to your buddy’s cell phone when he’s within range (for
free!) or to download your pictures to your PC when you get home.
We’re beginning to see Bluetooth headsets (like those currently available for
cell phones) becoming available for home cordless phones as well. JABRA’s
FreeSpeak wireless headset and multi-adapter for non-Bluetooth phones
(www.jabra.com; $179) plugs into any phone with a 2.5mm jack.